Girl in the Moonlight

by Charles Dubow

  At dinner I sat next to Carmen, who normally was so reserved, but I managed to entertain her with a few jokes. She was going to be a senior in high school next year and was trying to decide whether she should go to Harvard or Oxford. She already knew she wanted to be a doctor. On my other side was Dot, who drank too much, and at one point put her hand on my thigh under the table.

  After the dishes were cleared, Aurelio rose to make a toast. He thanked everyone. His mother first. Then his grandparents. To my surprise, he also thanked me. We all said “Salut” and took a sip of wine.

  Roger found me. He was as jovial as always. Yvette and he had split up. His hair was turning gray. He asked after me. About school. As always, he expressed himself with his hands as much as his voice. He could not help touching the people he talked with. It was a trait the whole family shared. Constantly roaming over people’s shoulders, patting a knee. He was a little drunk, and his eyes were glassy. “Good, good,” he said in response to my answers to his questions. He also asked after my father. They were no longer as close as they had been.

  “Tell Mitch I said hello. It’s been too long since I saw him. Tell him I miss him.” He had a pained look in his eye that focused in for a moment and then disappeared. “What about girls?” he asked, changing the subject. “Bet a handsome young man like you must have plenty of girls. You should have seen your old man. He was a real pussy hound.”

  Aurelio came up. “Take a walk?” he asked.

  I said good night to Roger and promised I’d tell my father to give him a call. I looked around for Cesca, but I didn’t see her. She must have left while I was talking with Roger. Disappointed, I followed Aurelio outside. He had a bottle of wine and offered it to me.

  “Thank you for coming tonight,” he said, as we walked under the stars. “I will miss you.”

  “I will miss you too.”

  “You know, you are one of my only friends.”

  This surprised me. He had the gift of friendship. People were drawn to him. Men, women, old, young. I had seen it. His charm and his soulful eyes. It was easy to like him.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I know many people, but that doesn’t mean they are my friends. Or that I respect them. I respect very few people. Almost none my own age—except for my family, of course. That is why I suppose I prefer older people like Paolo and Esther. You are one of the only young people I have met whom I respect.”

  I said nothing. “That’s just it,” he continued. “You know when to be quiet. When to say nothing. You are content to just accept things as they come and learn from them. That is very difficult. It takes people lifetimes to do that, but to you it comes naturally.”

  I had never looked at it that way. To me, it was simply shyness or good manners. My mother always told me that people don’t like someone who talks too much. I was, however, pleased that Aurelio thought so highly of me. He was certainly the only person around my age whom I respected greatly. I had other friends—classmates and former classmates. Fellow oarsmen. I was even moderately popular. At least no one seemed to actively object to my presence. But none of them knew of my interest in art or understood it so perfectly. Even the girls I had dated knew nothing of my ambitions, thinking instead that I was destined for a nice, safe, normal career like the rest of my peers.

  I thanked Aurelio and took another drink of the wine. We were sitting now on the same stretch of beach where I had gone swimming with Cesca the year before. The moon shone above the water.

  The memory was bittersweet, and I probably drank more of the wine than I should have. We talked about Barcelona, art school, the insidious effect that money had on the art world—one of his recurrent themes—the importance of creating something beautiful not for fame or reward but for the thing itself. Aurelio did most of the talking. I mainly sat there thinking about Cesca and getting drunk. I desperately wanted to talk about Cesca, in the annoying way that young men feel compelled to share their romantic aspirations, but every time the subject was on my lips I said nothing. He was her brother after all. His first loyalties lay there.

  At one point I lay down on the sand, listening to the waves gently lap the shore, staring up at the stars, feeling at peace. It was good to have a friend like this, I reflected. I was so grateful to him, for his companionship, his encouragement. And for introducing me to Paolo and Esther. The future seemed a little clearer. Maybe Cesca would also be there in some way. I couldn’t see it yet, but it was a nice thought. Aurelio talked on.

  “I love you,” he said, disturbing my reverie.

  These were not words I was accustomed to hearing, especially from a man. My mother had said them to me when I was a child, tucking me into bed with a kiss on the forehead. Or as a form of apology or to soften the blow of a punishment. “You know I love you, but . . .” That was how my father spoke to me, throwing the phrase out in passing, as though it would be embarrassing not to adumbrate it with a qualification, avoiding any whiff of sentimentality. I took it for granted that my parents loved me, as I loved them, but we were not a family given to regularly professing our affection for one another.

  Certainly I had never heard these words uttered to me by a girl of my own age, even if I did yearn to use them myself and hear them reciprocated. Most of all from Cesca. When we were together I had told her that I loved her and had felt in her touch what I believed to be love, but the words never came. Sometimes she would pretend not to hear me, other times she would stroke my head and say, “Thank you, Wylie.”

  I was unsure how to respond to Aurelio. Maybe in Europe it was more conventional, like topless sunbathing. Didn’t French men kiss each other on the cheek? I didn’t want to insult him.

  “I—I love you too,” I said, meaning that I felt deep affection for him, which was the truth.

  He put his hand on mine. It was dark, and I could barely see him, but I heard him shift closer to me. Felt his breath on my face.

  I stood up, and he pulled away.

  “I have to go,” I said, stumbling back over the dunes, wanting to get as far away as possible.

  “Wylie, come back,” he called.

  I didn’t listen. I had heard about guys like that. We made fun of them. They compromised us. But I was young then and didn’t know that love could take more than one form.

  10

  I AVOIDED THE BONETS AFTER WHAT HAPPENED THAT night with Aurelio. That meant I never finished my drawing of Cesca, though it remained in my sketchbook. That whole year I would go back and stare at the unfinished drawing of Cesca I had made that night. While I had soon filled up my first sketchbook and had worked my way through several more, like a postulant with a favorite psalm I would return almost nightly to the portrait of Cesca. I had sketched the broad outline of her face and hair but only finished one of the eyes. It stared at me, beautiful and restless. The rest of her features were ghostly, lightly penciled in, the mischievous smile just barely perceptible, the dark hair only a vague mass. It was far from a perfect likeness but it was all I had.

  There were other concerns that year. After I had returned to boarding school in the fall for my senior year, my mother went to my father and told him she wanted a divorce. The news had come as a surprise to both him and me. I had never thought of my parents as particularly unhappy. But I had never really thought of them as particularly happy either. In the selfish way of children, I had just assumed that nothing would come along to disturb my world. Other children’s parents might get divorced but not mine.

  But my mother was unhappy. Unlike my father, who was naturally gregarious, she didn’t have many friends, and during the summers her days, especially the ones when my father was working in the city, were lonely ones. She was southern and missed her home, her friends and family, and did not like many of my father’s associates. She found them ill-mannered and their humor crude. Their women were loud and overdressed. She was like a cat living in a nation of dogs.

  When I was a child she was my best friend. We would raid vegetable sta
nds together, hunt for frogs in the mud, dig holes in the backyard, attack the local beach on our bikes. She, not my father, was the one who taught me how to bait a hook and catch crabs with a chicken leg. How to bodysurf. During summer weeks she would sit out on the back porch with her vodka and cigarettes, my absent father’s chair unoccupied until the weekend, while I played on the floor with my impressive collection of toy tanks. She would tell me stories about her family, about her own childhood. Memories of faded plantations and foxhunting, large Christmas parties and sledding in Richmond during rare but ecstatic snows. About her father, who was a hero in the war and had been killed at Saint-Lô. On her desk was a black-and-white photograph of him, handsome in his captain’s uniform. She kept the Silver Star that had been posthumously awarded him in its box in the top drawer of her little writing desk.

  My father was crushed by her demand. He had felt that the marriage was a success. That they were as happy as ever. “That’s the point, Mitch,” she had sighed. She was not vindictive, though, letting him hold on to the East Hampton house while she kept the New York apartment. This she would soon sell in order to return to Virginia. My father, meanwhile, was living in a small rental apartment near Beekman, but I never saw it. The rest of the details, the process of cutting away the dead tissue from the live, were spared me.

  I did have a single visit from my father late that fall. He appeared unannounced at my school on a Saturday and took me out to lunch at the local inn, where instead of eating he just alternated between saying how much he still loved my mother and telling me how she was a bitch who had ruined his life. Naturally, I couldn’t agree with him but sat there nodding, letting his anger wash over me, sensing the pain of his wounded pride, the wreckage of his life. It was only years later that I learned of his affairs.

  I was spending my first Christmas break after the divorce at our soon-to-be-sold apartment with my mother when I ran into Cesca at a New Year’s Eve party. She was on her way out with a group of people as I was coming in. “Wylie,” she exclaimed. “How wonderful to see you. We’re late for another party. Give me a call. Happy New Year!”

  I took her at her word and called the number late in the afternoon on the first. The phone rang four or five times before an unfamiliar voice answered “Bonet residence.”

  “Good afternoon. Is Cesca there?”

  “Miss Cesca no here.”

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “She be back later.”

  I debated leaving a message but decided against it.

  “Thank you. I’ll call back later.”

  When I did call back, the same voice answered. It was around seven o’clock. The time after naps and before dinner, at least in Manhattan.

  The voice on the other end said, “You wait. I see if she here.”

  “Please tell her it’s Wylie.”

  I waited several minutes before Cesca came on the line. “Hello? Wylie?”

  “Hi. Yes, it’s me. Sorry to bother you. You did say that I should give you a call.”

  “Look, I have to run out.”

  “I was hoping I could see you.”

  “I don’t know. I’m very busy.”

  “Please? I have to go back to school soon.”

  She sighed. “Okay. Tell you what, can you come downtown tomorrow around four? I know a little café.”

  “Great. Where?” She gave me an address on Waverly Place.

  I arrived early. The café was dark and smoky inside. The walls held faded photographs of long-dead opera singers. I sat at a small empty table in a corner. A waiter approached. I didn’t know what a cappuccino or latté was, so I just ordered a cup of coffee. “American or French?” the waiter asked. “American,” I answered, unsure of the difference.

  Ten minutes passed. Twenty. There was no sign of Cesca. I wondered if I should call her from the pay phone on the wall. Even if I could remember her number, I debated whether it would do any good. If she were coming, she would have already left. The thought that she might not come depressed me. I felt foolish and then slightly angry, at myself for thinking she would be interested in seeing me and at her for letting me think it.

  I had finished my second cup of coffee and was about to leave when Cesca walked in. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, giving me a quick kiss before sitting down.

  She was wearing a long oatmeal-colored sheepskin coat, blue jeans, and Frye boots. Her head was covered by a light wool cap. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold.

  “It’s been a crazy day,” she said, taking off her cap and shaking her hair out, an act that cut me like a knife. There was a simplicity and naturalness about her that made her even more beautiful. The waiter hurried over. She stood to give him a kiss. “Ciao, Danny,” she said. She asked him to bring her a cappuccino and took a pack of Marlboros from her purse.

  “So how are you?” she asked.

  She was like that and knew it was easy to forgive her. Her presence exonerated her.

  I told her about school, painting, applying to college, my parents’ divorce. She was empathetic, recalling her own parents’ divorce. “It was hard at first,” she told me, then shrugged. “My father was never around much anyway, so it didn’t really seem all that different at first. You’ll learn.”

  I asked her about herself. She was taking time off from Barnard. Maybe she would not go back to college after all. She was thinking about transferring to an art school. Somewhere that offered a degree. Possibly Parsons or SVA. Maybe London. She had heard good things about Saint Martins. Or maybe the Beaux-Arts in Paris. It was a big decision.

  I was envious of her opportunity, wishing I was in a position to alter my life the same way. I would be going to college in the fall. If I told my parents I wanted to go to art school, they would oppose it. My father because he would think it was a stupid, airy-fairy idea—and he’d be damned if he was going to pay for it. My mother because it wasn’t what one did, dear.

  I told Cesca this, and she laughed. “We don’t have that problem in our family,” she said. “My grandfather would love it if we became artists. Or actors. Or anything. Aurelio will become a great painter,” she said. “Cosmo a great composer.”

  What about her? I asked.

  “I’m not sure yet. Maybe a set designer. Maybe a painter. Whatever it is, I’ll be great at it.” She laughed and looked at her watch. “I have to go.”

  She put down her cup and opened her purse. “No, please,” I said, fishing around in the pockets of my khakis for my money. “Let me.” We’d barely been talking for half an hour. I didn’t want it to end. “Please don’t go just yet,” I pleaded.

  She gave me a sympathetic but resigned smile. “I have to go, Wylie. Another time.”

  “Wait, one second. Can I ask you something? It’s important. It’s about Aurelio.”

  She resumed her seat. “What is it?”

  “Um, I don’t know quite how to say this.”

  “Say what?”

  “Aurelio. Is he, I mean, does he like girls?”

  She laughed. “Of course he likes girls. Why do you ask?”

  I blushed. “I just wondered. He, um . . .” But I couldn’t finish.

  She looked at me evenly and leaned in, smiling. “He also likes boys,” she whispered. “I think he’d do it with a turnip if he was attracted to it.”

  I sat back and took this in. It was not information I wanted to hear, but I supposed it was better, if only slightly, than the alternative.

  “You look confused,” she said.

  I nodded my head. “I am confused.”

  “Why?”

  I proceeded to tell her about what had happened on the beach. How surprised and angry I had been.

  “I can understand that,” she said. “I hope you forgave him.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know if I can.”

  “Of course, you should. He’s still Lio.”

  “Yeah, but he’s a guy. He shouldn’t be doing that kind of thing at all. I freaked out, you know?
I haven’t seen him since, and I don’t know if I want to.”

  She looked at me, her dark eyes amused, bold. “So what if he made a little pass at you? You’re lovely. I don’t remember you complaining when I did it.”

  I looked away, embarrassed and annoyed. I didn’t want to discuss what had happened between us quite so casually.

  She laughed. “Don’t be too hard on Lio. He’s a sweetheart. He didn’t mean anything by it. I know how fond he is of you.” She stood up. “Look, I really have to go. How long are you in New York for?”

  I told her. Only three more days and then back to school.

  “I’m going skiing in Utah tomorrow so I probably won’t see you before you leave. But you’ll be back out next summer, right? And if Lio’s around, I hope he won’t freak you out too much.”

  She bent over and gave me a kiss, not on the cheek, but this time, to my surprise, on the lips, lingering just a second longer than necessary. The softness of her lips, their warmth; I remember them still. Standing up, she ran her fingers through my hair. “So handsome,” she said. “I’ll see you in the summer, okay? Adéu.”

  BUT I DIDN’T SEE HER THAT SUMMER. I DID, HOWEVER, SEE Aurelio.

  It was at Paolo and Esther’s. I was living with my father, once again working as a carpenter and painting in the evenings, but I still went to see them every Saturday. Paolo would critique my work while Esther fed us. Most days I would help in the garden, planting or weeding. Sometimes Paolo and I would walk to the beach, where he would make fantastic sand sculptures and flirt with the pretty girls. Once, a beautiful blond woman in a bikini rode by on a horse. I had never seen him so excited. He walked up to her. “Ciao, bella donna,” he cooed in his heavy accent. “You are a goddess, no? Come and sit with us miserable mortals and tell us what it is like up in heaven.”

  To my astonishment, she dismounted and sat with us, and for an hour she helped Paolo with one of his sculptures while the horse wandered about in the background, nibbling on beach grass. Paolo kept her laughing with a running string of stories and compliments. It was a delicious moment. He was at that age when a man can charm a woman without being a threat. Certainly if he had been younger, he would have charmed her right into bed. With his short legs and handsome face, he never failed to remind me of a satyr.